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Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming the primary source of information for millions of people. For authoritarian states, control over generative AI has turned into a critically important element of controlling and managing the masses. This is precisely why Russian language-model developments and the services connected to them deserve close attention. But are they really a “sovereign” technology of Russian origin? Consider the example of YandexGPT – a large languag

This report traces how Russia sustains its war in Ukraine by recruiting foreign nationals, many of them deceived or coerced, through a global pipeline of social media advertisements, intermediaries and disposable websites. It centres on a recent investigation by the European External Action Service (EEAS), which uncovered a coordinated digital infrastructure behind this recruitment drive. The Kremlin has faced challenges in recruiting personnel for its war against Ukraine. Wi

The Kremlin’s propaganda is increasingly documenting the symptoms of a systemic crisis, while criticism of Putin is no longer an absolute taboo even among former supporters of the regime. After the failure of the “Kyiv in three days” plan, when Russian propaganda was filled with triumphant rhetoric, its propagandists mastered a peculiar genre: they could spend hours listing the problems facing their country, yet with almost mystical persistence avoided discussing the causes o

By Alexandr Popadin / Unsplash Life Inside the Fortress: Everyday Reality Challenges Kremlin Narratives in Kaliningrad In official discourse, Kaliningrad is increasingly portrayed as Russia’s western fortress: resilient, patriotic, and under constant external pressure. Yet propaganda must also compete with people’s everyday experience. Rising prices, logistical disruption, security alerts and the militarisation of public life shape how residents perceive the consequences of R

Photo: Ruslan Mingazhov / Unsplash From bridge to fortress: How the Kremlin is recasting Kaliningrad Kaliningrad Oblast is a Russian semi-exclave on the Baltic Sea, separated from mainland Russia and located between Lithuania and Poland – both members of the EU and NATO. The region itself was created after the Second World War from the northern part of former East Prussia, transferred to the USSR under the Potsdam agreements in 1945. This makes Kaliningrad simultaneously a Ru

Source: Ruptly/ Tass While Ukraine most often garners headlines for its drone warfare innovation, the country is also producing a playbook for countering the destructive effects of Russian propaganda. This Ukrainian experience offers important lessons for the wider Western world. As NATO leaders convene for the Ankara Summit on July 7, the alliance’s future is at stake. Key objectives in Ankara include sustaining American commitment and embedding drone technology across the i

Ukraine’s accession to the European Union is not only a political process. It is a strategic security choice for Ukraine and for Europe. That is why Russia is attacking it not only with missiles, but also with manipulation, fear, and distrust. A joint report by the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), Beyond the Battlefield: Russia’s Information War Against Ukraine’s European Future, shows that Russia’s attempts to underm

Russian First Person View (FPV) drones have become a defining feature of the war in Ukraine. The same drones used to drop explosives on civilians and military targets are also being used to distribute propaganda leaflets in frontline communities, combining physical violence with psychological warfare. A video report from Kherson. The combination of violence and persuasion may seem contradictory, but studies of coercive control offer an explanation. The Russian tactics in Kher

European External Action Service (EEAS) and Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation (CCD) published a joint analytical report examining how Russian Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) targets Ukraine’s path towards European Union membership. The report documents a coordinated effort to undermine support for Ukraine’s accession among both Ukrainian and European audiences. While the narratives vary depending on the target audience, their strategic ob

Yandex is one of Russia’s leading technology companies. Just like Google, for more than twenty years it has served as the gateway to the internet, as well as a source of knowledge about the world and current events, for many users in Russia and abroad, especially in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The problem is that the Russian state has long manipulated the information Yandex users receive in their searches, shaping a distorted picture of reality. Those who buy an

The dead of World War II are now conscripts for the Putin’s regime’s battle to own 20th century history. The Immortal Regiment march in Montpellier, France / Source polk.press On May 8 and 9, so-called Immortal Regiment marches were staged across dozens of countries, with crowds carrying portraits of Russian relatives who died in World War II. The significance is far greater than mere commemoration; however, the Kremlin-aided parades represent a key regime propaganda event.

One of the features that makes propaganda effective is that it reshapes how people understand the world around them, turning war into ‘peace’ and lies into ‘truth’. Propaganda, disinformation, and information manipulation more generally do not work like an order from a commander which makes a person take up arms; its influence is more gradual and more insidious. The non-governmental group LingvaLexa, with the support of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and the

Vladimir Kuznetsov, known as Vovan, and Alexei Stolyarov, who goes by Lexus, are known for pranking world leaders and celebrities. They have called many of them using fake aliases, often posing as Russian, Ukrainian, or Western politicians, publishing carefully selected excerpts on their social media accounts. Framed as comedy, their work is highly political, consistently reinforcing narratives favourable to Moscow. A shift after Crimea: targeting Ukraine and its allies Their

By Don Fontijn / Unsplash Despite suffering an estimated 1.2 million casualties in Ukraine since 2022, Russian forces continue to replenish their ranks at a pace that roughly matches battlefield losses. Attempts to explain this phenomenon by focusing on coercion or financial incentives are incomplete. In fact, enlistment bonuses for soldiers have been reduced or eliminated across many Russian regions since 2025. Meanwhile, Ukrainian intelligence indicates that approximatel

Before taking a deeper dive into the 4th EEAS Report on FIMI Threats , let’s first look at the pro-Kremlin narratives observed over the past week. Pro-Kremlin FIMI activity focused on distorting both security developments and Europe’s economic outlook. One example was the false claim that the rocket targeting a joint US-UK military base located on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia was launched from a submarine in a false flag attack by the US . Unsubstantiated false fla

This article reflects key arguments from a debate hosted by the European External Action Service (EEAS) on 16 January 2026 Ukraine is central to European history One of the most persistent distortions in discussions about Russia’s war against Ukraine is the assumption that Ukraine is historically marginal, an “edge case” recently pulled into European affairs. This assumption is not only wrong; it actively reproduces a Kremlin-centred view of history. Ukraine has been a core s

Since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the outbreak of hostilities in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, residents of Ukraine’s temporarily occupied territories (TOT) have faced a steadily tightening system of information control. This process accelerated dramatically after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Today, an estimated 5 to 6 million people living under occupation exist in a prolonged state of information limbo. They are cut off from Ukrain

Imagine a world where your past is not yours – where every event, every hero, every town can be deleted and replaced with someone else’s script. For Ukraine, this has not been speculative fiction but but a political practice it continues to resist. Centuries of Ukrainian history have been rewritten by Russia, which corrupts the files, reformats archives, so that they conform to its imperial design. In late 2025, Vladimir Putin signed Decree No. 858 , a technical document outl

Some young people resist Kremlin pressure to create a generation of Putin-supporting nationalists. The West must recognize and support them. Russian anti-war activist Maxim Lypkan / Source: memopzk.org “Wars are not won by generals, but by schoolteachers,” Vladimir Putin said in 2023, in a statement that has become a cornerstone of his approach to youth indoctrination. The regime is determined to reshape young Russians’ minds by replacing critical thinking with militarized pa

The mythology of Russian military invincibility is not new, but since the full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 it has become one of the central pillars of the Kremlin’s information warfare. Research shows this narrative is deliberately engineered to serve geopolitical, military and psychological objectives; in particular to deter Western support for Ukraine, demoralise Ukrainian society, and project an image abroad of unstoppable Russian power . The invincibility myth depic